


Eulogy

by bluecanary101



Category: Zeroes Series - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Craig The Father Figure, Craig is wildly ooc but whatever, Gen, just a lot of waffly bullshit tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 13:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18661681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecanary101/pseuds/bluecanary101
Summary: Craig was more observant than you'd think.





	Eulogy

Saldana was up to something, and Craig was pretty sure he knew what.

It was pretty obvious, honestly. Saldana wasn’t good at subtly, never was in all the months Craig had known him. It was a testament to just how fucking terrified all the other kids were that none of them realized that Saldana was off. Not even Flicker, who could be weirdly perceptive even though she was blind, so much so that sometimes Craig suspected she was faking it.

Although, to be fair, they were all off, and for a damn good reason. Being afraid for your life tends to do that to people. And none of them were trained soldiers either, which maybe gave Craig an unfair advantage.

Not that Craig really knew what the fuck was going on. Back in August when Saldana hired him Craig learned very quickly to just not ask questions. They usually wouldn’t get answered, and when they did the answers didn’t make much sense. Craig didn’t know if the kids really believed in the bullshit they spouted about powers or if they just used it to throw people off. Either way, it was weird and confusing.

The day after Christmas, when Saldana called him into the Dish and explained what was going on, he really only told Craig the bare minimum. There was some crazy guy trying to kill them, they’d already seen him kill one of those weirdos who messed with the Dish during the last opening, and shit was getting critical. Also bring a power drill and some two by fours. At that point Craig was used to operating in a permeant state of confusion when it came to the kids, so he just rolled with it.

But even with Craig’s giant information gap, Saldana’s real plan was plain as day. In everything Saldana did, how his jaw was set, how his eyes shifted, how he kept trying to readjust his sweater to hide the bulge of a gun at his waist. Even as he helped prepare The Dish, it was clear Saldana was making plans of his own.

Alone. It was part heartbreaking and part the most frustrating thing Craig had ever seen.

He had half a mind to grab Saldana and shake some sense into him in front of the entire team. It wouldn’t even be hard. If Craig wanted to be could take the gun in two seconds flat and expose Nate’s plan for the everyone to see. Something told him that they wouldn’t be too happy about it. And god did he want to.

But you don’t ever disobey your commanding officer, or make your boss look weak in front of his crew. Same reason Craig still called him Saldana in his head. Part of that was the army and how it drilled a respect for your superiors into you, and part of it was Craig’s wealth of experience with not getting shot by wacko mob bosses.

Granted, usually Craig’s boss wasn’t 17. Even so, Saldana was still in charge, mostly. To what extent the other kids let him be in charge.

So, Craig waited until he could get the kid alone. Call it an ambush.

In his head he had a whole list of things he wanted to say. Craig had been planning for this moment since September, when he realized he was stuck caring about these morons no matter what. And also that the morons were heading straight for some really shady shit. Although he always thought he’d be saying it to Chizara, maybe Flicker if shit really went sideways.

Chizara was all about doing the noble thing. Even though she and her friends did plenty of not noble things, she still oriented herself around her morality. She also tended to jump into action without thinking too much, and those two traits combined set her up for a whole world of hurt. Craig knew how fast morality and quick action can clash, even when the action was meant to protect someone. Especially so. He’d seen it happen before.

Flicker was a lot more straight forward. She put up a pretty good angelic act, but there was an underlying trickiness about her. Like with the dubious blindness. She’d do what she needed to do, if the time came. The issue was that when she did, she’d probably send herself into a tailspin. The line between doing what you need to in order to survive and going completely batshit is surprisingly blurry when you get down to it. 

In both cases, Craig’s main objective was to keep them from going to a place too dark to come back from. They were going to go to a dark place anyway, that’s what happens when you kill someone. Can’t avoid it, and you probably shouldn’t either. It’s not a bad thing to put that much value in human life, where taking it makes you so sick of yourself you can’t stand it.

But sometimes you can’t avoid shit like that, and when that happens you need to figure out how to handle it before the sickness swallows you whole.

Again, Craig spoke from experience.

But the speeches he had on hand were specific to Flicker and Chizara. Some tailoring was required for Saldana. Which might be tricky given the limited timeframe Craig had to work with, but he’d deal. It was going to be a tricky conversation no matter what.

He went through the bullet points of the speech as he worked with the kids to enforce the Dish. It felt like rehearsing for a job interview, back after the army but before Craig gave up on being a law-abiding citizen. The job this time was apparently to keep a few shithead teenagers from dying or cracking themselves up beyond repair. Shouldn’t be hard. Maybe. Hopefully.

Sometimes in moments like this Craig wondered how he let himself get so invested in these little fucks. These batshit crazy children who kept getting way in over their heads on accident and claimed to have superpowers. When did Craig Hartswoth, The Craig, become so committed to their well being that he started making elaborate plans to give them advice that he never really followed himself?

Craig didn’t know. He could figure it out later. For now, he had to focus on keeping the little shits alive. And ambushing Saldana with murder advice.

An ambush opportunity presented itself when Saldana went upstairs to get some extra nails. Craig handed off his door hinge project to Kelsie and followed Saldana as discretely as he could.

When he cornered him, Saldana didn’t look like he was trying to find the box of nails. He was facing the window with his back to the door Craig came through, fidgeting with something that Craig couldn’t see.

Craig cleared his throat and Saldana jumped about half a foot and something hard and metallic clattered to the ground. Craig winced, Saldana swore in Spanish, but the gun didn’t go off like they were both expecting.

At least Saldana knew the basics of gun safety.

“You know how to use that thing?” Craig asked as Saldana scrambled to pick it up. Redundant, but more as an icebreaker than anything.

“Yes,” Saldana gritted out as he straightened. If he was surprised that Craig was the one who caught him, he didn’t show it. He just looked mad.

“Do you know what you’re doin’ with it?”

He’d been tense the entire day and now Saldana stiffened up even more. It was beginning to look painful. “That should be pretty obvious too,” he said, and even his voice sounded wound tight.

They weren’t going to beat around the murder bush then. That suited Craig fine, made his life way easier. “Guess so.”

“You can’t stop me.” There was a strange new note in Saldana’s voice that Craig never heard there before. Something in between determination and desperation. Like he what he meant to say was “you better not try to stop me, or else”.

Ok, so Craig may have overestimated Saldana’s ability to be a rational person in this situation. That was understandable. Sometimes Craig still forgot that these kids weren’t soldiers, and he couldn’t expect them to react the way a soldier would. He still wanted to give a come to Jesus speech, but he put all that on a backburner for a bit. His immediate objective was to get Saldana to stop white knuckling the gun handle.

Craig had this trick where he kind of slouched a little to make himself smaller and less intimidating. It wasn’t particularly effective, but he liked to think he was better at it than some of the guys he knew. He used it a lot with the zeroes. Particularly Ethan back in the early days when he was still, understandably, freaked out about the whole thing where Craig tried to kill him a few times.

This was the first time he ever felt the need to project nonthreatening around Saldana. The second he made the shift Saldana’s eyes narrowed at him, because of course he caught that. Saldana was awful at interpersonal relationships, but damn good at people in general. Craig didn’t stop, let himself be transparent. Maybe if Saldana knew what was coming it would be easier.

It was always mind games with these kids. Sort of exhausting.

Craig huffed out a laugh, faux relaxed, “Damn kid, do I look like a saint to you? I ain’t gonna try.”

“Then why are you here?” Saldana asked.

“15 bucks an hour.”

The ploy worked, sort of. Saldana smiled tightly, more like a grimace, but anything was better than the slightly manic look he had in his eyes. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to pay you for today. Sorry.”

“I kinda figured,” Craig said, grinning.

Saldana stared into the corner of the room in silence for a moment, then sighed and put the gun down on the windowsill. Craig relaxed just a little bit, but Saldana was still giving off the same vibe as a cat with its hackles raised, and now he was avoiding eye contact. That wasn’t a very Saldana thing to do. Then again, today was just full of un-Saldana like things.

Craig looked at him for a little bit while he weighed his next words. He was disheveled, hair curlier and messier than usual. The sweater wasn’t so out of character that it was suspicious, but it wasn’t as fancy as his usual getup. For the first time since they’d met, he looked like a real teenager. Just some preppy high school kid who Craig could see stressing out over a test or doing chores. Or stealing his dad’s gun because he felt backed into a corner and didn’t know what else to. Y’know, teenage stuff.

That was always what happened when you put a person face to face with death. Craig saw it happen over and over. What are you when you take away all the grandstanding, all the lofty ideals? What will you do?

Nataniel Saldana was just a kid with a gun and not a single clue.

Years ago, Craig Hartsworth had been a kid with a gun who thought he knew what he was signing up for. But patriotism and bravery stopped fucking mattering when the bullets started to fly. Eventually all that mattered anymore was people. Family. Whatever you want to call them. People, and how they die, and how you keep yourself a person.

Maybe that was why Craig felt so responsible for the zeroes. Even for Nate. Maybe he wanted to give them some of the guidance that he never got back then. Maybe he saw the beginnings of a family that was tattered and imperfect, but who needed each other so damn much it hurt.

Craig decided on a course of action just before the silence got awkward. “You realize that the thing you think you’re going to do, I’ve done. A lot,” he said gruffly.

“I’m not going to let you try, he’d eat you alive. I will do it.” Craig almost believed in superpowers now, just because of how fucking raw Nate looked when he said that.

Craig raised his hands in surrender, “I wasn’t suggesting that.”

“I don’t care what you were suggesting. I’m doing this.”

“Slow down kid. You have no idea what that means.”

Nate’s eyes snapped up to Craig’s so suddenly and fiercely that Craig was almost startled. “Yeah, maybe not. I also don’t give a shit.” Nate spat. He took a breath and when he spoke next, he sounded calmer, but he was still staring Craig down with the same intensity. “Right now, they’re the only priority. As long as everyone else gets out safe I can take whatever comes.”

Oh. Well then.

Craig chuckled, almost on accident. “That’s good, kid,” he said. When Nate furrowed his eyebrows at him, he added “I honestly didn’t expect you to have anything like that figured out. Good job.”

“Figured out?”

“Listen, I’m something of an authority on murdering people.”

“Okay?”

“So, believe me when I say, if you’re going to do this you need a good reason. And you definitely need something to hold onto afterward to keep your head straight. You seem to have all that down already, though.”

Nate blinked a few times. “When you did it, did you have a good reason?” he asked. He didn’t sound accusatory, just curious. Like he wanted something to compare himself to.

Craig tipped his head back and hummed. He thought about Iraq and the streets of Los Angeles. The kids who lined up at bootcamp in 2002, the kids who ran drugs for people who didn’t give a shit about them, and the kid standing in front of him now. He thought of veteran’s support groups and hallow eyes and the last time he held a gun with the expectation of using it. He wasn’t sure what answer Nate wanted from him, so Craig went with the truth. “Sometimes. Not always.”

Nate nodded, apparently satisfied. “Look after them for me, please.”

“I will, that’s a promise.”

“Thank you.” Now that he was paying attention, Craig could actually see how Nate was trying to put his usual glowing façade back up. It didn’t work like it usually did. “I should go back to the others,” he said, shoving the gun back into his waistband. He really should get a holster for that, but Craig decided he should save that topic for later. “Don’t forget the nails,” he said instead.

Fucking with Nate was always fun, in that way that messing with authority figures so often was. Watching his expression when he was caught off guard was still pretty funny, even now. Craig felt sort of bad. “Right. Yeah. Right,” Nate sputtered, picking up a box seemingly at random, and made for the door.

Craig stopped him with a hand on his shoulder as he was passing and made sure Nate was looking him in the eye. “Good luck, Glorious Leader.”  
Nate grinned wryly. “I hate that name.”

“Do you think I like The Craig? It sounds stupid. But we don’t choose how other people see us. We just do what we can with what we got.”

In the end that’s all you can do.

**Author's Note:**

> first fic ever, which is probably obvious given that it isnt the best writing in the world, but hey i tried
> 
> this was originally going to be a part of a way longer thing, but after a literal year of trying and failing to finish the thing ive officially decided to pare down my ambitions a little. might try to continue this eventually, we'll see. idk. for now this is what yall r getting. enjoy i guess. like comment and subscribe


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